Prez wrote on Aug 22, 2010, 22:50:Go Mafia 2! Playing the original (free with Steam preorder of Mafia 2), bolstered with a dozen mods to make it look more modern, and I gotta say it has held up extremely well. Great atmosphere, great story, great game.

Hm, unfortunately the demo was completely unstable here, frozes every now and then. Controls are kind of awkward too, you have to stand on the exact spot for the doors / switches to activate. Too bad, it did look fun.

Many of the fixes affecting balance, gameplay, or plot scripting are alreadyincluded in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation®3 versions of Dragon Age: Origins.

BALANCE- Daggers now apply 0.5 points of damage per additional point in dexterity and0.5 points of damage per additional point in strength, as originally intended.This increases dagger damage for high-dexterity characters.- During combat, mana or stamina reserves now correctly regenerate more quicklywhen reserves are low. This allows players to occasionally use an talent orspell in the later stages of lengthy fights.- When exploring, mana and stamina now regenerate more quickly at highercharacter levels. This reduces downtime between fights.- The spells Force Field, Crushing Prison, Cone of Cold, and Blizzard now haveshorter durations and/or longer cooldowns. This ensures that combatants can nolonger stun-lock each other by repeatedly casting the same spell.- The cooldowns for several low-level sustained abilities are now shorter. Thisensures that players are not penalized for accidentally deactivating them.- Certain battles were not scaling properly, resulting in excessively difficultfights. They now scale as intended.- Enemy corpses now drop health poultices and money more appropriately,resulting in less clutter in the player's inventory.

GAMEPLAY- In rare cases, enemy corpses were selectable when they contained no loot.This no longer occurs.- Party members whose combat tactics were set to defensive behavior nolonger stop attacking after using a spell or talent.- In rare cases, combat tactics conditions could fail to determine whether acharacter had enough mana or stamina to use an ability. This no longer occurs.- The Rally talent no longer repeats its audio effect if it is active duringcertain conversations.- The Rally talent no longer deactivates upon area transitions or conversations.- The Shimmering Shield spell now deactivates when the character is out of mana.

PLOT (SPOILER WARNING)- Promotional downloadable content items now remain in the player's inventorywhen standard items are removed at the end of the dwarf noble origin.- Repeatedly talking to Duncan after gathering the vials in the Korcari Wildsbut not the treaties no longer provides duplicate experience.- Leliana's personal plot can now be completed if the player substantiallyincreased her approval (through gifts) before talking to her.- During the siege of Redcliffe, enemies are no longer able to spawn inlocations that would break the plot.- Bann Teagan no longer disappears when he is supposed to be accessible duringUrn of Sacred Ashes.

PC-SPECIFIC- Controlling a summoned creature (like a ranger's pets) during certain specialarea transitions no longer results in odd behavior.- Creating a character in a custom module did not create a folder for saves.This could result in corruption of main campaign saves. This no longer occurs.- In some cases, the class icon was set incorrectly for characters importedfrom the downloadable Character Creator. This no longer occurs.- The options menu now includes a setting to automatically download previouslypurchased content that is not currently installed.- After installing new downloadable content, the game now always reminds theuser to restart the game.- The icons for some promotional downloadable content items were missing. Theynow appear correctly.- Various issues could occasionally cause uploads to the online player profileto fail unexpectedly. This no longer occurs.

I have another issue with this demo. For a 1-GB download, I would have preferred not to have to endure the long and repeatitive game ad between every single race, it's very annoying and I hope it's not a sign of what is to come with the full game.

Usually it's just a few screenshot luring you into buying the full game, shown before quitting. Here it's just plain invasive. The only way out is to switch to Windows and kill the process, usually is faster than waiting between races (but then you'll lose your points).

Another case of how badly marketing guys can mar a very good game, it's the new fashion

The demo gives a good feeling of what the game is like though, so I guess it's worth the download if you have a fast connection, despite this ad cockup.

And also this, as expected (though the embedded adware will surely be more explicitly stated in the manual of the full version):

"3. Consent to Use of Data. To facilitate Technical Protection Measures, the provision of software updates, any dynamically served content, product support and other services to you, including online play, you agree that EA and its affiliates may collect, use, store and transmit technical and related information that identifies your computer (including an Internet Protocol Address and hardware identification), operating system and application software and peripheral hardware. EA and its affiliates may also use this information in the aggregate, in a form which does not personally identify you, to improve our products and services and we may share anonymous aggregate data with our third party service providers. - [Yeah, we know who you're talking about...]

4. Consent to Public Display of Data. If you participate in online services, such as online play or the downloading and uploading of content, EA and its affiliates may also collect, use, store, transmit and publicly display statistical data regarding game play (including scores, rankings and achievements), or identify content that is created and shared by you with other players. Data that personally identifies you is collected, used, stored and transmitted in accordance with EA’s Privacy Policy located at www.ea.com."

The issue here is not so much the DRM as the adaptative in-game advertisement system, from Massive (Microsoft). System that EA refuse to confirm even though the deal was made public days ago (granted, it wasn't a press release so perhaps it wasn't supposed to be known - unless I missed it).

I keep wondering why we have to buy the game and open the box before knowing it is an adware, not even sure this is really legal, but as long as there are buyers...

Sure enough, Far Cry 2 is already available in Europe on Steam, and Fallout 3 will be unlocked on the 31st.

However, both are much more expensive (about 35-40%) than if you buy them from Amazon or any other online shop, and you have to wait for this huge download which makes the delay about the same especially when the servers are on their knees (if they are online at all).

I'd gladly download games, music and software I buy instead of ordering the real product to be shipped, until they build more recyclable cases and so on, but the price has to be competitive. Here it's just plain abuse! Is that justified?

Besides, I like the paper manual - even if they get thinner and thinner, thanks to people who really can't concentrate on more than a couple page's reading

So thank you very much Steam but no, I'll wait until tomorrow and receive my copy of Far Cry 2 in the mailbox, I'll enjoy the fresh smell of plastic and drying ink, reading the fat manual (is there any? ), while saving money. It will give just enough time and bandwidth to download the nVidia driver updates...

The question is, will many people want to buy it after the terrible feedback given by the reviews? I personally changed my mind when I read the first reviews, and luckily (or not) I hadn't bought it by then because of the delay due to the CD key issue.

Has anyone enjoyed Clear Sky despite the apparent lack of balance in the game?